Charlotte Calder

My latest book is Surviving Amber, published by Pan Macmillan in 2005.

It’s about how two 16 year-old girl cousins cope when Amber, the arrogant, sophisticated one of the two and her dysfunctional family come to live with country girl Heath and her rumbunctious tribe at their remote island home.

The best thing about being a writer is being able to live in a parallel world to your ordinary, everyday one.

If I wasn’t a writer I’d be sitting in an office and wishing I was writing!

My first published work (apart from a rather gruesome short story that ended with a woman drowning some crayfish in a bucket of fresh water!) was Settling Storms, published by Lothian Books in 2000.

Morning person or night-owl? Morning!! – though before I had kids I was the reverse. My husband is the opposite to me – he can barely say a civilised word before breakfast, whereas I can hardly think after 6 pm and generally have my darkest, direst thoughts around 10 or 11. Wish I was a night-owl though – would get a lot more writing done!

My first job, apart from waitressing at uni, was as an attendant in the Australian Pavillion at Expo '74, in the USA. There were 18 of us, all about 21, from all over Oz, and we had to stand there for six months, answering the same questions over and over again, getting fatter (there was a 50-flavour icecream stand across the way!), more bored and cheekier by the minute. Americans didn't know much about Australia in those days, and a typical conversation went something like this:
Q: Are you from Ostralia? Speak some Ostralian!
A: Waggawagga thargamindna mountisa alicesprings ...
Q: Neat! (pulling out a pen and notebook) What does that mean?
Or:
Is this the Austrian Pavillion? Say, I didn't know Austria had beaches!
The best thing about the whole experience was living with, working with and getting to know the other (all very different) 17 attendants. We all became really close and still keep in touch.

On a quiz show, my special subject would be Utterly Useless Trivia.

My last holiday was at our usual beach spot near Yamba, up the north coast of NSW, where, on the second-last day, I managed to have a slight altercation with someone else's surfboard. After a quick trip to hospital in an ambulance (good book material!) I ended up with two black eyes, a broken nose and a pointy witch's chin. My husband felt like hanging a sign around his neck saying: 'It wasn't me!'

My perfect Saturday sounds totally boring!! Breakfast in bed, papers, coffee!!, pottering, maybe a spot of gardening or tennis, dinner with friends, or better still, just with the family. So different from every other middle-aged mum – not!

The last CD I bought was recommended by my 21 year-old daughter and then promptly pinched by her! By a brilliant one-man band from Sydney Uni called Andyclockwise.

I’m currently reading Birds Without Wings, by Louis de Bernieres, author of Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Unputdownable, vivid, sad and funny, and the best anti-war novel I've ever read.

Big Brother or Australian Idol? The correct answer here, of course, is neither – they're both trash! But authors are inveterate watchers of the most trivial and boring human interraction, so I'd have to say BB. Though as far as AI goes, being ex-actor I have a horrid fascination with watching poor hapless souls audition ...

Favourite film/tv show is ... Favourite film is always the last one I really enjoyed – can't remember any further back – which was Brokeback Mountain. My favourite TV show is definitely Spicks & Specks – the hilariously witty music trivia quiz show on the ABC.

My favourite book is …how could you possibly choose?! The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx, The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver (particularly recommended for older YA reading), The Vivisector, by Patrick White all spring to mind. Further back – I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Wind in the Willows, Samuel Whiskers ...

The book character I would most like to meet is ... hmm, just can't think!! Probably because good fiction authors can make the most ordinary-seeming characters fascinating, by revealing their inner selves so vividly. The writer I would most like to meet, like so many other people, would be William Shakespeare – though it's a bit late now!

The book character I would least like to meet is The White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – have no desire to be turned into a statue!

The worst thing I’ve ever written is probably a school essay with a thrilling title such as A Day to Remember, or My Favourite Hobby. Hope teachers aren't still setting such boring topics!

When I was growing up I wanted to be a doctor. Which is a bit strange seeing I was always bottom of the class in maths and science. If you cut open my brain you'd find that the maths/science sections would be either completely shrivelled, or non-existent.

My heroes are anyone who speaks up about the frightening decline of human rights in our so-called civilized western world – or anywhere else, for that matter. Also the lovely NRMA (RACV in Victoria) repairmen who come out and fix my punctures – 4WD tyres too heavy to lift – on the terrible dirt roads around our place.